The present invention relates to absorbent articles for retaining body fluids such as urine, menses, or fecal material, and in particular to their ability to acquire and retain aqueous based materials. The invention further relates to disposable absorbent articles such as baby diapers or training pants, adult incontinence products, and feminine hygiene products.
Disposable absorbent articles such as diapers, sanitary napkins, adult incontinence products, and the like are well known in the art. Such articles are used for handling body exudates such as urine, menses, fecal material, and other aqueous body liquids.
It has been a recent trend to provide absorbent articles which comprise liquid handling members of a low density. Such liquid handling members are capable of rapidly acquiring large volumes of body exudates deposited onto the absorbent article. In particular for the handling of high viscosity liquids, it is desired that the liquid handling members have large open pores. For example such structures are described in WO 95/05139 (Roe), in WO 99/25293 (Bast et al.), and in WO 99/25294 (Roe et al.).
On the other hand, liquid handling members having large open pores generally do not have planar major surfaces since at least some of the large open pores will extend to the surfaces. During use of and article comprising such a liquid handling member, the pressure exerted onto the article for example by the wearer sitting on the article has to be carried by the remaining parts of the surface. Hence, a relatively high pressure is exerted onto the skin of the wearer at these surface parts leading to a undesirably low level of wearing comfort and ultimately to skin marking.
Hence, it is an object of the present invention to provide a disposable absorbent article which overcomes the problems posed by the prior art absorbent articles.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a disposable absorbent article comprising a liquid handling member that collapses at a pressure between 2756 Pascal (0.4 psi) and 3447(0.5 psi).
The present invention provides an disposable absorbent article comprising a liquid pervious structured carrier, a liquid impervious backsheet at least partially peripherally joined to the structured carrier, a liquid storage structure positioned intermediate the topsheet and the backsheet, and a liquid handling structure positioned intermediate the topsheet and the liquid storage structure, the liquid handling structure having a caliper under a confining pressure of 689 Pascal (0.1 psi) of at least 0.5 mm. The absorbent article of the present invention is characterized in that the liquid handling structure has a caliper under a confining pressure of 2756 Pascal (0.4 psi) of at least 80% of the caliper under a confining pressure of 689 Pascal and the liquid handling structure has a caliper under a confining pressure of 3447 Pascal (0.5 psi) of less than 80% of the caliper under a confining pressure of 689 Pascal.